In the spring of 2003, Martin Tétreault and Otomo Yoshihide toured part of Europe in a 15-date, 16-day marathon organized by Les Instants chavirés, in co-production with SuperMusique.

Out of these improv concerts, six were captured on various media: CD-R, DAT and MiniDisc. The thought of preserving these moments came naturally to the ears of our two turntablists and was motivated by the renewed pleasure of playing together and, of course, by the quality of the music, which, night after night, explored new forms, ranging from sonic economy to something much harsher. This spontaneous reaction from the musicians would come from the quality of both room and stage sound, the venue occupied — museum, auditorium, rock bar — or the attention of the audience.

Soon, the idea of releasing a live album was explored. But there was too much material to fit on a single disc. And so it was decided to put together a trilogy where each disc would focus on one aspect of the duo’s work on stage: the noisiest material on 1. Grrr (November ’04), the most fragmented on 2. Tok (February ’05), and finally the smoothest on 3. Ahhh (May ’05).

Let’s be honest, duos mining the so-called experimental music field are not new. But then again, can you really call the turntable a “new” instrument? People have “played” the turntable, on it, beside and inside it, for years now. Luckily for us (partially due to the popularity of rap) over the last two decades, there has been a resurgence of this neglected instrument. These three discs document the 2003 collaboration of two of the most innovative turntablists around: Quebec-based Martin Tétreault and Japanese Otomo Yoshihide. Together they create a maelstrom of turntable fury.

1. Grrr was meant to document the noisiest moments from the duo’s 2003 European tour. To be fair, it’s not the chaotic and obscenely ferocious acts of turntable mutilation that I take pleasure in on this CD. What excites me most are those quiet and pensive moments (such as on Nijmegen no 4b / Extrapool 25.04.03) that turn the preconceived sound of the turntable upside down. There is a definite pulsing beat to this piece. You hear a warm, glowing core here, not a human machine used to play LPs. This is one of the signs of a great duo, of a duo that is more than happy to experiment to get fresh results and unfamiliar sounds deep from their instruments. How many other turntable duos do you know that can make their instruments mimic a duo of a (high-pitched) alto player and a bassist? Final word of warning – 1. Grrr is not for the faint of heart. It is for those that need a huge jolt with their usual dose of mundane music.

I think 2. Tok was meant to showcase the more cut’n’paste approach to both musicians’ work. The album alternates between the obscure and the bizarre in a matter of a minute and the listener gets taken for a wild ride. The effect is quite spectacular. Tiny shifts in timbre, pitch and essence, this time around the music is about the texture rather than pure shock value. Pieces are dense but palatable to the ear. There’s more crackle than pop as the sounds are strangely pasted and layered in a fashion one could not imagine. This isn’t necessarily a sign of maturity (their work stands fine on its own merit – age has nothing to do with it). Simply put, both men needed to outline a part of their working relationship that didn’t get much exposure in the past. Abrasive to some, while welcoming to others, it’s best to let the sounds take their own course and declare a verdict afterwards. 2. Tok then is not about style, it is about the means in which an idea gets put across.

Finally, to close off this trilogy we get 3. Ahhh. Whether you’d like to take this literally or not (“Ahhh” could be a sign of relief as much as it is a declaration of restful state), the record is the most quiet one of the bunch. Now, the duo concentrates exclusively on the art of silence. It’s the state of the unheard, the art of the less explored that the duo are mining. Sure, you need patience for this record as the individual pieces develop slowly, often times leaving us without a resolution or a climax of sorts. Rather, it’s the journey that excites the two. Sound is suggested and implied. There is no direct over-the-top delivery here. You really have to listen to hear – to truly HEAR this record. Subtle pulsing heartbeats, huge machines revving up but never starting and that warmth are all here for the taking. In fact, the entire record proves that turntables can be very human, very organic and most obviously very lovable instruments.

If I had to pick a personal favourite, from a conceptual standpoint, 3. Ahhh turns out to be the highlight of the trilogy. Kudos go to the record label [Ambiances Magnétiques, distributed by DAME] that decided to push the entire trilogy as stand-alone releases to the market.

… turntables can be very human, very organic and most obviously very lovable instruments.

Before we move forward, it’s important that you know the story behind 1. Grrr and the two discs that follow it (2. Tok and 3. Ahhh, respectively). Tétreault and Yoshihide are turntablists, albeit turntablists of a different stripe: above and beyond scratching, cutting and so forth, they favor modified turntables and heavily processed sounds, and are prone to applying their stylii to items other than vinyl records (1. Grrr’s liner photo shows Yoshihide attempting to “play” a small cymbal). In early 2003, the pair played a fifteen date tour, improvising a fresh set of turntable-derived aural extremity every night. Several of these sets were recorded, and their highlights were used to create three different live albums, each one based around a specific sonic theme. 1. Grrr, as its title implies, collects the loudest and most abrasive bits.

Actually, that’s a bit of an understatement. If you’ve ever been put off by an album that was made with recognizable musical instruments, you have little or no hope of getting through 1. Grrr, a series of abrasive drones, grinding sounds, piercing squeals and other sounds from the angry end of the sonic palette. Even if you regularly listen to so-called “noise” records, and can detect the art in 1. Grrr’s assault - the textures, the nuances of physical manipulation, the fleeting moments of beauty - seventy minutes of this material is a punishing slog. It’s possible to play it as pure background music, but eventually some portion of it will get to you. In our office, the odds-on favorite is Grenoble no 1 / Le 102, 29.04.03, which adds a piercing, migraine-inducing squeal to the various low-register rumbles.

The thing is, albums like 1. Grrr are nuclear weapons for your record collection - it’s important to play them once, so that the world around you knows just how far you’re prepared to go. After that, you need merely threaten to play it again and watch how quickly people cooperate with you. Eventually, friends or your common sense will encourage you to get rid of 1. Grrr, but don’t; you’ll sleep better at night knowing it’s there.

It’s too bad that this CD doesn’t come with an accompanying video of Tétreault and Otomo performing, for that would have made what the two turntablists actually do much more transparent to the uninitiated. The eight pieces on this album were recorded during a tour of France in 2003, and anyone who saw the duo in Montréal in October of that year can attest to the musical (and comic) genius of these two master improvisers. The turntables themselves are used as instruments, while whatever vinyl is used is apt to be employed as a weird plectrum or drumstick as anything else. Shoes and coats might serve the same purpose. One more thing-play loud!

The first in a series of three discs featuring live turntable improvisations, 1. Grrr is the thrash punk equivalent of vinyl manipulation. Not that vinyl is used exclusively or at all in some cases. Industrial noise in the style of Merzbow is generated by the collision of surface and electricity. In some places this may be stylus on vinyl, elsewhere copper coil grinding a hand cymbal finds its way onto the turntable. Tétreault and Otomo explore levels of distortion and saturation frequently in the red, but frame the noise with beats and pulses to enclose the impact. Recorded during a week of shows throughout France, the pieces become more brutal and blunt as the tour progresses. The recording is superb and in early tracks minute details of sound can be isolated within the overall squall. 1. Grrr is to be followed by two other collections titled 2. Tok and 3. Ahhh, featuring other aspects of their live collaboration.

This CD marks the first in a series of releases by sound artists Martin Tétreault (Québec) and Otomo Yoshihide (Japan). The music has been drawn from a series of live gigs in Europe in 2003 and assembled into a series of 3 discs:1. Grrr (distorted, aggressive, noisy), 2. Tok (fragmented) 3. Ahhh (smooth) and possibly 4. Hmmm (throwaways). 1. Grrr is basically full spectrum abrasion but not of the sometimes sterile world of more formal noise art, more reminiscent of drum oriented music and more specifically heavy rock, metal etc. These improvisers have managed to create music that has the integrity and compositional arc of songs and have done it pretty much with analogue tools. The tone of the sounds themselves remind me more of the crashing finales of the rock/metal world (Neil Young’s feedback-driven Arc comes to mind), stretched out and basted in the on/off schizophrenic babbling of electronics artfully malfunctioning at an incredible rate. The communication level between these musicians is incredibly high and this has given us a CD of some of the best moments of power and aggression since Never Mind the Bollocks. I can’t wait to hear the next instalment.

The communication level between these musicians is incredibly high and this has given us a CD of some of the best moments of power and aggression…

The first part of a live trilogy has been released by Dame, a label from Montréal. The album focuses on the noisiest material during the European tour (spring 2003) of this duo. Glas splinters can hurt. Some people need this pain to feel something. Some people use glas spilnters to create something painful and beautiful. Martin Tétreault and Otomo Yoshihide are already known from releases such as 21 situations and the 3 Mini CD Box Studio — Analogique — Numérique (Ambiances Magnétiques). They use comparable short sound fragments, which are interrupted from time to time. There are some rhythmic moments to be found on their album 1. Grrr, but in general the sounds seem to come coincidentally and with precision. The two turntabilists delivered a cacaphonic mixture of noise fragments. The music is layered, extreme, harsh and loud. Sound snippets are catapulized with high speed into the musical orbit. Peeps and bass fragments keep the soundstructure together, while at the same time terrorizing your ears. Except in between tracks, the listener has no time to recover from this sound battle. Despite the inaccessibillty of the music one notices the quallty of the music. Both artists know exactly what they are doing. Let’s hope the next output in these series will be just as good.

Except in between tracks, the listener has no time to recover from this sound battle.

If I am not mistaken (and usually I am) this might be the third CD by Canada’s noise duo morceaux_de_machines, aka Erick d’Orion and A_dontigny, but here they are guested by Diane Labrosse (with whom Dontigny already made a CD), Otomo Yoshihide and Martin Tétreault. They play on some of the live tracks on this album. morceaux_de_machines are, I think, best described as a live-improv musique concrete noise outfit. They use records, cds, electronics and computers and cook up a steamy mix of cut ‘n paste sounds, taking apart the exisiting sounds (of vinyl, of cds) and putting them in this huge blender called mixing board and effects and rather go for the louder and nastier elements, than say, something smooth and soft. It was hard to tell that there were live tracks on this CD (I read the liner notes usually afterwards), but in hindsight, I think the studio pieces are a bit concetrated and denser and the live pieces something more loosely structured. There is a certain Merzbow influence to be detected here, but than of the Batztoutai with Memorial Gadgets period (late 80s Merzbow). Overall a nice work, but at over seventy-five minutes also a lenghty experience. More = more seems to be their point. Nice one anyway.

The same Otomo Yoshihide and the same Martin Tétreault toured Europe in the springtime 2003, playing fifteen concerts in sixteen days, under which one I saw at Extrapool. Of course every concert was recorded and the results are thematically organised for release. 1. Grrr contains the noise aspects of the concerts, and to be released are 2. Tok with the more fragmented stuff and 3. Ahhh with the more smoother moments. Both Yoshihide and Tétreault play turntable and objects. As indicated this is indeed a disc full (very full at seventy four minutes) of noise. Yet, I am altogether not very sure if this was a good idea. In a concert situation the two go in one concert from loud to fragmented to soft and back again. That makes the concert by Tétreault and Yoshihide a breathtaking experience. But when they cut out, say all the noise elements of all concerts and isolate them on one CD, it’s a different thing. It may appeal to noise-fans alike, but for me (not always a noise fan) it was simply too much. I rather had one CD documentating all the various aspects of duo, the best moments of every concert.